terms and conditions

Terms and conditions of use

1. Introduction
1.1. These terms and conditions govern your use of our website – www.bridgetoindia.com.By using our website, you accept these terms and conditions in full; if you disagree with any part of these terms and conditions, you must not use our website.
1.2. You must be at least 18 years of age to use our website; by using our website, you warrant and represent to us that you are at least 18 years of age.

2. Our details
2.1. This website is owned and operated by BRIDGE TO INDIA Energy Private Limited.
2.2. We are registered in India under registration number CIN: U40106 HR2008 PTC058267, and our registered office is at C8/5 DLF 1, Gurugram 122001, INDIA.
2.3. Our principal place of business is at C8/5 DLF 1, Gurugram 122001, INDIA.
2.4. Our GST number is 06AADCB 6783 D1ZQ.
2.5. You can contact us by post at the address given above or by telephone on +91-124-420-4003 or by email at contact@bridgetoindia.com.

3. Ownership and licence to use
3.1. All information and content on our website is owned exclusively by us. We reserve the right to discontinue or alter any or all of the website content at any time.
3.2. The website contents are protected by Indian copyright and international copyright/intellectual property laws under applicable treaties and/or conventions.
3.3. We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the website.
3.4. We reserve the right to restrict access to our website at our discretion; you must not circumvent or bypass, or attempt to circumvent or bypass, any such access restriction measures.

4. Acceptable use
4.1. You must not edit or modify any material on our website.
4.2. You must not:
(a) sell, rent or sub-license material from our website;
(b) share, reproduce or copy any material from our website without our express written consent.
4.3. You must not:
(a) use our website in any way or take any action that causes, or may cause, damage to the website or impairment of the performance, availability or accessibility of the website;
(b) use our website in any way that is unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful;
(c) conduct any systematic or automated data collection activities (including without limitation scraping, data mining, data extraction and data harvesting) on or in relation to our website;
(d) use data collected from our website for any direct marketing activity (including without limitation email marketing, SMS marketing, telemarketing and direct mailing).

5. Limited warranties
5.1. We do not warrant or representcompleteness or accuracy of the information published on our website. The information available on our website is of general use and may not be suitable for you.
5.2. We aim to provide accurate and up-to-date information but are not legally liable for the accuracy of such information.
5.3. You use our website at your own risk.
5.4. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we exclude all representations and warranties relating to the subject matter of these terms and conditions, our website and the use of our website.

6. Registration and accounts
6.1. You may register for an account with our website by completing and submitting the account registration form on our website.
6.2. You must keep your password confidential.
6.3. You must not use any other person’s account to access the website.
6.4. You must not allow any other person to use your account to access the website.
6.5. You must notify us in writing immediately if you become aware of any unauthorised use of your account.
6.6. We may suspend or cancel your accountat any time in our sole discretion without notice or explanation.

7. Purchases
All purchases made on this website are non-refundable and non-exchangeable.

8. Your content
8.1. In these terms and conditions, “your content” means all information and materials (including without limitation text, graphics, images, audio material, video material, audio-visual material, scripts, software and files) that you submit to us for storage or publication on, processing by, or transmission via, our website.
8.2. You grant to us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to reproduce, store and, with your specific consent, publish your content on our website.
8.3. You warrant and represent that your content will comply with these terms and conditions. Your content must not be illegal or unlawful, must not infringe any person’s legal rights, and must not be capable of giving rise to legal action against any person (in each case in any jurisdiction and under any applicable law).
8.4. Your content, and the use of your content by us in accordance with these terms and conditions, must not:
(c) infringe any copyright, trade mark or other intellectual property right;
(k) be in breach of any contractual obligation owed to any person;
(n) be untrue, false, inaccurate or misleading;

9. Privacy
9.1. Information collection and use – For a better experience while using our website, we may require you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information, including but not limited to your name, phone number andemail address. The information that we collect may be used to contact or identify you.
9.2. If you use our website, you agree to the collection and use of information in relation with these terms and conditions. The personal information collected by us is used for providing and improving our services. We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described here.
9.3. Log data – Whenever you visit our website, we collect information that your browser sends to us including your computer’s Internet Protocol address, pages of our website visited by you, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, and other statistics.
9.4. Cookies – these are files with small amount of data that is commonly used as anonymous unique identifier. These are sent to your browser from the website and are stored on your computer’s hard drive.Our website uses these “cookies” to collection information and to improve our website. You have the option to either accept or refuse these cookies and know when a cookie is being sent to your computer. If you choose to refuse our cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Service.
9.5. Service providers – We may employ third-party companies and individuals to improve or repair our website and to assist with running our business activities etc. These third parties may have access to your personal informationto perform the tasks assigned by us to them. However, they are obligated not to disclose or use the information for any other purpose.
9.6. Security – We value your personal information and strive to protect it and keep it confidential. But as no technology or system can be 100% secure and reliable, we cannot guarantee absolute security of your personal information.
9.7. Links to other sites – Our website may contain links to other sites. These external sites are not operated by us and we have no control over, and assume no responsibility for their content, privacy policies, or any other business practices.
9.8. Children’s privacy – Our website does not serve anyone under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal identifiable information from children under 18. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so that we can delete their information and take any other necessary actions.

10. Breach of these terms and conditions
10.1. Without prejudice to our other rights under these terms and conditions, if you breach these terms and conditions in any way, or if we reasonably suspect that you have breached these terms and conditions in any way, we maysuspend your access to our website, prohibit you permanently from accessing our website and/or commence suitable legal action against you, whether for breach of contract or otherwise.
10.2. Where we suspend or prohibit or block your access to our website or a part of our website, you must not take any action to circumvent such suspension or prohibition or blocking (including without limitation [creating and/or using a different account).

11. Amendments
11.1. We may revise these terms and conditions from time to time.
11.2. The revised terms and conditions shall apply to the use of our website from the date of publication of the revised terms and conditions on the website, and you hereby waive any right you may otherwise have to be notified of, or to consent to, revisions of these terms and conditions.

12. Others
12.1. You hereby agree that we may assign, transfer, sub-contract or otherwise deal with our rights and/or obligations under these terms and conditions.
12.2. You may not without our prior written consent assign, transfer, sub-contract or otherwise deal with any of your rights and/or obligations under these terms and conditions.
12.3. If a provision of these terms and conditions is determined by any court or other competent authority to be unlawful and/or unenforceable, other provisions will continue in effect.
12.4. The exercise of your and our rights under these terms and conditions is not subject to the consent of any third party.
12.5. The terms and conditions constitute the entire agreement between you and us in relation to your use of our website and supersede all such previous agreements between you and us.
12.6. These terms and conditions shall be governed by and construed in accordance with Indian Law.
12.7. Any disputes relating to these terms and conditions shall be subject to the exclusivejurisdiction of the courts of India.

Renewables in India: Bringing it All Together

Recently, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) released a draft of the “National Renewable Energy Act” (refer). Along with the proposed amendments to the Electricity Act 2003 and the National Tariff Policy 2005 (refer), this act will create structural policy changes to help increase the share of renewables in India’s energy mix. In the first section, the document describes in detail how institutional structures would be created. However, it is the subsequent sections that have caught our attention. This is our take:

A “National Renewable Energy Fund” will be created and a fixed portion of the National Clean Energy Fund will be directly channeled into it

There will be guidelines for renewable energy procurement, including but not limited to competitive bidding processes

The first interesting point relates to getting India’s states on board. The Renewable Energy Act envisages that the central government and each state government will formulate a renewable energy policy and a renewable energy plan. As a part of a “National Renewable Energy Plan” a framework would be created for a national, uniform and mandatory renewable purchase obligation (RPO) trajectory for all obligated entities. Currently, each state fixes its own trajectory for RPOs and solar RPOs that have been set still relate to the earlier, lower national target of 3% (it is now 10.25%). This is in addition to earlier changes of the the Electricity Act and Tariff Policy amendments, where provisions have been made for imposing fines for non-compliance and easy pass through of costs through tariffs for effective compliance.

We understand that the fundamental problem that power is a concurrent subject still remains. However, the central government has several levers that it can use to get states to toe its line. Availability of funds and a clout in fuel supply, power generation and power transmission through central government owned companies are examples of such levers. In the past, the push for renewables from the central government has not been as strong as it seems now. Usually, state governments do not have a lot of incentive in deviating too far from the central government policies. We are hopeful that this on-going effort will yield results on setting up and implementation of obligations.

A second interesting point relates to India’s National Clean Energy Fund (NCEF). This fund is provisioned by an INR 200 cess on every ton of coal used in the country (the cess was just doubled in the last budget in February this year). The fund has a current corpus of INR 170 billion (USD 2.6 billion) (refer). However, only a small portion of this fund has been made available for renewables. In the past, it was used mostly for fiscal troubleshooting with very little transparency. The new Renewable Energy Act now proposes to set aside a fixed portion, yet to be determined, of the funds for a separate National Renewable Energy Fund. This fund will be under the control of the relevant implementing authorities, primarily MNRE. With more clarity on availability of funds, MNRE can set up more predictable support and policy schemes.

A third noteworthy suggestion relates to creating a more uniform project allocation process. Currently, most allocations in the country are based on tariff bidding against benchmarks set by various regulatory commissions. The proposed amendments to the National Tariff Policy 2005 provides for a provision for obligated entities procuring solar power on a cost plus basis from conventional power generators who need to meet their Renewable Generation Obligation (RGO). This can have huge implications on the solar market in India. It is essential that the process for such allocations is completely transparent and provides a level-playing field. In light of this, the draft Renewable Energy Act states that the ministry would publish guidelines for procurement mechanisms, including but not limited to competitive bidding processes.

With the proposed amendments to the Electricity Act 2003, the National Tariff policy 2005, the announcement of National Renewable Energy Act 2015, the expected announcements on the national and state Renewable Energy Policies and Renewable Energy Plans, a near complete demand creation framework for renewables is being formulated at the central government level.

All these bills need to first pass the hurdle of the legislative process in the Parliament. While the Electricity Act amendments have already been tabled, the Tariff Policy amendments and Renewable Energy Act should be ready by the winter or latest by budget session (later part of the financial year 2015-16). Following this Act, the central government would introduce a renewable energy policy and a renewable energy plan and also facilitate state level renewable energy policies and state level renewable energy plans.

It seems that this entire framework will require at least until the middle of 2017 to become operational. Until then, the government wants to provide an early push and allocate up to 15,000 MW of solar projects under the current framework.

2 comments

I feel this draft act is confused finding its position in present legal framework. there is nothing in this act which is not being done at present, except if in place will pose one more regulatory proceedings, compliance to be followed. i feel the need at present is to reduce hassle and clear and upfront regulatory framework not introduction of many both at centre and states. i would’ve expected modification in tariff policy and national electricity policy providing guidelines paving road for wider and uniform application of renewable promotion rather than new act to be followed and complied. being a concurrent subject it will expose states to shed of its powers to rule on renewable in their states. there is still ambuiguity in proposed electricity(Amendment) Bill 2014 w.r.t. renewable generation obligation (RGo), MoP and MNRE shall resolve complications w.r.t that as that have equal power to push rapid RE addition in country

[…] for all obligated entities. This was envisaged under the draft National Renewable Energy Act (refer) released in July 2015. As with the proposed amendments to the Electricity Act 2003, the National […]